The Hard Books Book Club

 

  I belong to a book club that challenges its members to read super hard books. As you might expect, there are not a lot of members; only three in fact. Our first book was the notoriously difficult Ulysses by James Joyce. Most people who start Ulysses give up by the third chapter. It just seems crazy. Most of those who do finish the book have a hard time saying what it was all about.

  I had read Ulysses twice before the Hard Book Club took it on. I was determined I was going comprehend it this time because those who know say it’s a great book. Those who know also say it's worth the effort.

  Since my second reading of Ulysses in 1979, the Internet has been invented and there’s lots of help online. Even YouTube was helpful. But even with assistance you must apply a lot of effort before the smoke clears and you can warm yourself at the flame of Joyce’s genius.  

  We met monthly on Zoom through the pandemic. It took eighteen months to get through Ulysses’ eighteen chapters. By the time we were finishing the book, we had gotten our vaccines and we were able to gather for a celebratory feast. We patted ourselves on the back for mastering a book that remains a closed one for most.

  Our next selection was Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes. Written in the early 1600s, this book is considered the world’s  first novel.  It's just as thick as Ulysses, but nowhere near as difficult. The challenge for me was to stick with it.  It's a collection of adventures of a supposed knight roaming around Spain attacking windmills he perceives as giants and rescuing  damsels who don’t want or need to be rescued. 

  I actually gave the book up halfway through and started reading the Cliff Notes online. Then I discovered the audio version on my library’s website. This dramatic reading brought the book to life and I finally saw the charm that four centuries of readers before me had seen.

  It was my turn to choose our next hard book and I chose Moby Dick by Herman Melville. This is a book I'd already read several times, starting with the Classics Illustrated comic book as a child. It's not a comic story. Rather it's the story of  mad Captain Ahab’s attempt to kill the whale that bit his leg off.  Instead, the whale kills him and sinks his ship for good measure.

  It's an exciting story and it's also the best picture we have of the great whaling industry that provided oil for lighting before people started digging oil out of the ground. What makes the book difficult is the language, not that the language is especially obscure. Rather it's the author's forays down dark rabbit holes as he equates us and himself with Captain Ahab and the whale with the implacable force of the universe which is killing us as we speak. Fun.

  There are many pleasures in reading Moby Dick, among them getting together as a group for our monthly discussion now that the pandemic has abated.  And then, there’s the lunch.

Lunch